That roster of co-sponsors includes a who’s-who list of potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2020, including Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Also backing the bill are Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Al Franken of Minnesota, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall of New Mexico, Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

Specifics on the bill and conjecture as to the political fight necessary to pass it are at the above link.

The bill has been endorsed by 30 national organizations and unions including: Labor Campaign for Single Payer, Our Revolution, Social Security Works, Progressive Campaign Change Committee, Democracy for America, Working Families Party, MoveOn, All of Us, Demand Progress, Health Care Now, Progressive Democrats of America, CREDO, Public Citizen, Latinos for Healthcare Equality, Americans for Democratic Action, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, DailyKos, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, 350.org, American Sustainable Business Council, LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens), National Nurses United, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, New York Nurses Association, Utility Workers Union of America, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, United Mine Workers of America, Amalgamated Transit Union and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

It would be great if Congress passed a single payer plan and it was signed into law. The U.S. needs to catch up with dozens of other countries and provide the healthcare that is needed. It is sad that at 58, me and my generation will never see this happen. The per capita expenditures on healthcare in the U.S.is double that of many countries. A person's health should not be determined by their wealth. While the insurance companies and drug companies continue to make billions, our citizens die and suffer needlessly. The priorities of Congress, the President, and millions of Americans that support them are screwed up! It sure goes without saying what Jesus or any person with any moral decency would do.

It is sad that at 58, me and my generation will never see this happen.

Who are you thinking may be the Dem presidential nominee in 2020? Not Booker, Gillibrand, Harris or Warren, I take it.

Well, I tend to agree with Warren that "the time is ripe." The House bill now has 118 of 194 Dems on board as co-sponsors (61%) and Sanders is just yesterday out the gate in the Senate with 16 of 48 Dems as co-sponsors (33%)--a formidable first showing, I think.

Dems need to be cognizant that the only "fix" to the ACA being discussed is the "fix" desired by the private insurance industry. We haven't read one word about how Congress intends to correct the ACA's most obvious weakness, namely that it finances on the backs of working class families that wider access to health insurance for the poor--and that matter too few in either party appear willing to "fix."

Harry Truman was pushing single-payer in 1945, Michael. It's past time for progressives to call out this Congress.

There is good chance that Gillibrand or another progressive woman will be the nominee. I love Warren, but do not think it is in the cards for her.The possibility of getting a single payer health plan, even with a progressive President, looks very doubtful. Dems look to pick up a few House seats in 2018 elections, but with gerrymandered districts, Republicans will keep control. Getting a Senate majority will be difficult for Democrats.With several red state Democratic Senators up for re-election, it will be hard to maintain the current 48 in their caucus. I do not have any faith in American voters.In observing the attitude of Republicans and others that support Trump it is apparent that it will be a very long time before Congress will make the right moral decision in regard to healthcare. It is sad that in a predominately Christian nation, family values and morally sound policies are not important to millions of misguided Christians. Many prefer corporate welfare to providing decent healthcare that would prevent the suffering and death of many men, women, and children. The powerful corporate lobbying will continue to do everything in their power to prevent our country from being ruined by socialized medicine. I think they are too powerful to lose this effort.

It took Grover Nordquist 50 years to brainwash the American public to buy into this government is bad, trickle down is good bullshit. The result is people are watching parents and children die and go hungry and without opportunity to help themselves. What is important is that we take a high profile attack, heavy on facts and keep pounding back. Single payer, living wage, and government funded education (college and trades) are all realistic short term goals. The math works rather nicely for all Americans, including the super wealthy.

(hint for the right wingers, at a 15% tax rate the take home on a million is 850,00. The take home on two million at 50% is 1,000,000. The market expands at the bottom increasing the gross income at the top. That is how an infusion of cash works. The wealthy, or the hard working wealthy I should say, still make more money in the same amount of time, they are just making it in a self sustaining economy.)

A never ending war. Hopefully, the battle for health care will be won.

Campaign contributions, lobbying, the revolving door of industry insiders working in government, interest group influence over regulators and even think tanks — all of these features of our current political system skew policy making to favor the wealthy and entrenched economic interests. “The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest,” Gouverneur Morris observed in 1787. “They always did. They always will.” An oligarchy — not a republic — is the inevitable result.

“The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest,” Gouverneur Morris observed in 1787. “They always did. They always will.” An oligarchy — not a republic — is the inevitable result.

Interesting link, jbr. Thanks. Have you been following the oligarchs' fledgling "seasteading" venture this year? Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, an ardent Trump supporter, was an early funder of the concept.

In January, the Seasteading Institute signed an agreement with French Polynesia to begin work on a floating island project that will ultimately have its own “special governing framework” and “innovative special economic zone.”

Independence—political and financial—is a central goal of seasteading. The movement doesn’t just strive to utilize the empty expanse of the ocean for human habitat—it seeks to create a space for new kinds of societies to spring up. And while the promise of technology is at the heart of their vision of a better life, seasteaders also argue that government would work better on the high seas—that the ocean, like all frontiers, would foster a new and unexpected form of politics.

According to the authors of Seasteading, the movement began when Friedman, an engineer at Google, concluded that land itself was getting in the way of his father and grandparents’ vision for the world. His father is David Friedman, an economist and theorist who advocates anarcho-capitalism; his grandparents were the economists Rose and Milton Friedman, whose 1980 best-seller Free to Choose provided the intellectual underpinning for the New Right’s case that free markets and personal choice would ease society’s woes.

Because I mentioned it to Michael above, I have to ask whether the subject of Harry Truman's (and LBJ's) support for a national single-payer health insurance program arose at Friday night's Knox County Democratic Party Truman Day Dinner? The event did take place only two days after Senate Democrats' announcement of their bill?

(Also see Politifact's recap of presidential efforts to expand and/or make universal health insurance programs, both public and private--with cordial nods to a few Republican ones--here. Of course, how it's done is as important as getting it done.)